Scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva may have detected the Higgs boson - the so-called "God particle."Photograph by: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP file photoLONDON - Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are rumoured to have found the elusive so-called "God particle."

A leaked internal memo contains unconfirmed reports that one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, had picked up signals that could be the long-sought-after particle, called the Higgs boson.

One of the main scientific goals of the huge $10-billion atom smasher was to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle believed to give everything in the universe mass.

The particle is a key part of the standard model used in physics to describe how particles and atoms are made up.

Rumours that scientists working on the LHC had found evidence of the Higgs boson began to circulate after a supposed internal memo was posted on the Internet.

But physicists were quick to urge caution over the claims as many candidates for the particle that appear in collision experiments at the LHC are subsequently dismissed on further examination.

Officials at CERN said the result had not yet been properly verified and could turn out to be a false alarm.

The memo revealed that one of the particle detectors at the LHC had caught a particle that could be a Higgs boson decaying into other high-energy particles known as photons.

The memo, written by four scientists working on the LHC's ATLAS experiment, warned the rate at which this happened was thirty times larger than would have been expected.

But it added: “The present result is the first definitive observation of physics beyond the standard model.

“Exciting new physics, including new particles, may be expected to be found in the very near future.”

Some scientists initially said they believed the memo could have been a hoax, but it was confirmed as genuine by officials at CERN.

James Gillies, official spokesman for CERN, said that while the results note was genuine, it was one of thousands constantly being produced by scientists and that it was still in the very early stages of assessment.

He said: "It is far too early to say if there is anything to it or not. There are 3,000 scientists working on ATLAS and they divide the analysis work up between them.

"This is an internal communication that highlights something interesting, but it has to go through several stages of assessment by the scientific team before it will be released as an official result by the collaborative team.

"The majority of these things turn out to be nothing at all. It is very speculative at this stage, but there is a great deal of excitement and anticipation that something will be found, which is probably why this has found its way onto the Internet."

Despite the official caution, there was intense speculation on Internet blogs and scientific websites that the results described in the memo signalled the first discovery of the Higgs boson.

The rumours come as officials in CERN revealed they had set a new world record by producing the most intense beams of particles ever achieved.

The memo first appeared on the blog of physicist Peter Woit, from Columbia University. He wrote: "It’s the sort of thing you would expect to see if there were a Higgs at that mass, but the number of events seen is about 30 times more than the standard model would predict."

Professor Brian Cox, a particle physicist at Manchester University and presenter of the BBC's Wonders of the Universe, urged caution over the results.

Writing on the social networking site Twitter, he said: "The Higgs rumours are from an internal, unchecked ATLAS document. Very bad science to leak it. Many mistakes are made in un-reviewed papers."

The Tevatron data from FermiLab bounds the Higgs to about 1.5x expectations or less.

We seem to have three choices here. The Tevatron data is wrong, the Standard Model from which the Higgs flows is wrong or this premature leak is wrong.

I would love to see this result verified. It would usher in a whole new era of particle physics and our understanding of the universe. However, given the strength and level of confidence of the two former, the later is the stronger candidate to be wrong by many orders of magnitude..

Calling the Higgs Boson "the GOD Particle" will cause perhaps even more misunderstandings than naming the expansion model of the Universe the "Big Bang Theory." The information conveyed to a scientist or educated layperson by these sorts of names is not at all the same as the connotation for Joe Blow reading a headline in the newspaper.

But it's catchy, and easily attracts attention especially in the media, so it'll stick, regardless of the inaccurate information it conveys to most people.

The information conveyed to a physicist by the name "the God particle" is that the speaker is not a physicist: almost no physicist calls it that. (The obvious exception is Leon Lederman, who coined the term in a book of the same name for the general public.) Higgs himself hates it, and most physicists don't like it at all. I was a particle physicist for ten years, plus five years in grad school, and I never heard that name used within the field once.

The world's biggest particle physics lab on Tuesday played down claims of a major discovery, after a leaked memo hinting that the elusive Higgs boson - or "God particle"- may have been found ricocheted around websites.

A spokesman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, says the memo wasn't intended for publication and the claims likely wouldn't withstand closer scrutiny. If proven to exist, the Higgs particle could explain why matter has mass, an enormous scientific breakthrough.

"The note is certainly genuine," spokesman James Gillies told The Associated Press on Tuesday. But he says such memos are merely the very first step in a rigorous peer-review process that tends to result in spectacular claims being knocked down by other scientists.

"I think the excitement is due mainly to the incredible sense of anticipation there is in particle physics at the moment," says Gillies.

Unifying the scientific ideas of formation is an undertaking that science and religion have been unable to achieve so far. Yet a recent breakthrough at the Fermilab facility in Illinois has brought humanity two steps nearer to what some have referred to as the “God particle”. Within two days of one another, both labs say they have found considerable hints at the presence of the sought-after Higgs boson, previously a theoretic jewel in the crown of particle science. I found this here: Higgs boson breakthrough hailed as window unto creation.May this invention a successful one!

it would mean that all those who thought they were bright lights, who thought that they could just scribble a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper and that this would be equal to reality, are actually not bright lights at all, but are in fact just dimwits-who has wasted billions on finding nothing.

But you have to just love their spin on it all:

"These are exciting times for particle physics," said Sergio Bertolucci, the research director at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), which runs the LHC.

"Discoveries are almost assured within the next 12 months. If the Higgs exists, the LHC experiments will soon find it. If it does not, its absence will point the way to new physics."

Its so exciting, we were completely wrong!! Isn't it terrific! Let's make up more fantasies!

I wonder if guys like Cavediver, who I am sure has believed in these things all along, when it turns out to be pure poppycock, will admit he was wrong? I am pretty sure I know the answer to this one.

I wonder if guys like Cavediver, who I am sure has believed in these things all along, when it turns out to be pure poppycock, will admit he was wrong? I am pretty sure I know the answer to this one.

That's more than a little unfair. The scientists come up with a theory and go out and put huge effort into finding out whether they are right or wrong. I'm sure you'll find that Cavediver, and the rest of them for that matter, will be more than happy to admit they they have gone down the wrong trail, (if that does prove to be the case), and start back looking for some other route that can be verified.